Drivers must pay more

Charging Pennsylvania drivers more for the privilege makes sense today, when the state desperately needs funds to maintain its roads and bridges.

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poconorecord.com

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Posted Apr. 24, 2013 at 12:01 AM

Posted Apr. 24, 2013 at 12:01 AM

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Charging Pennsylvania drivers more for the privilege makes sense today, when the state desperately needs funds to maintain its roads and bridges.

State Sen. John Rafferty, R-Montgomery, chairs the Senate Transportation Committee, and recently proposed $2.5 billion in transportation funding. The plan would raise $1.6 billion by uncapping the tax paid on the wholesale price of gasoline, as well as by raising driver's license and vehicle registration fees.

Under the plan, the average Pennsylvania driver would end up paying about $2.50 more per week by the third year through the combined fee increases and gas price hikes. License fees would rise from the current $29.50 every four years to $50.50 every six years. Vehicle registration, now $36 a year, would rise more sharply to $102 every two years.

Higher gas prices should discourage all drivers from driving unnecessary miles and from unnecessarily idling. But the fee hikes deserve a second look because they will hit low-income Pennsylvanians especially hard. The license will cost drivers about 11 percent more in the long haul; registering a vehicle, more than 40 percent more.

The best idea in the packet is the part that stings speeders and red-light runners — driving behavior that involves bad choices rather than necessity. No driver should speed or run a red light. But people do, all the time, sometimes with fatal consequences. The system should hit violators hard. Rafferty would add a $100 fee to all moving violations on top of existing fines. This measure alone could raise $75 million next year, and $100 million in five years. He also proposes to make license-points negotiations more costly, increasing the citation fee that's now $25 to anywhere from $100 to $300 for drivers who opt to pay fines instead of getting points off their license. That part of the plan would raise about $25.5 million a year.

Pennsylvania needs new revenues to help pay to repair almost 4,400 structurally deficient bridges and more than 10,000 miles of dilapidated roads. Linking the cost of maintaining all these roads and bridges to the drivers who use them makes sense.